blackened
by sea-salt kisses
Summary: Those who fight the monsters should see to it that they do not become one. — Komali


**blackened.**  
><em>those who fight the monsters should see to it that they do not become one.<br>_**. . .**

Komali knows there's a darkness that perches within him, lodges itself behind sheaths of thick skin and pulsing flesh. It purrs and throbs and roils and conquers, cresting like ocean waves until all he can hear is the tumultuous thrum of his own blood beating against his eardrums. At night when his father and mother lie together in the room next to his, he succumbs to it, lets it envelop his skin in velveteen blackness, soft and dark and smothering. Cloying like the summer wind beneath his ungrown wings, in the hollow nares of his beak. It finds him in the nebulous stage of awakening, washes over him as the sounds of lovemaking in the next room permeate the morning air. It haunts him in the dull periods of an afternoon lecture, coils about the dark column of his throat and tightens, tightens and tightens until he can't think, can't breathe, until the clouds blur together with the horizon and his knees buckle beneath him. It presses cold lips against the shell of one pointed ear, whispers of his fears and his inadequacies until he curls in on himself to keep from losing it completely.

* * *

><p>His grandmother has a pearl, one she shows him one day far above the din of the ocean swells. It gleams a dull orange with markings like black ink beneath the surface, feels cool and detached clutched between his palms. The reverence in which she gazes at it bids him cradle it like a child, drawing it closer to his chest. She smiles, the act as radiant as any he's ever seen, her white hair stark against the feathering pink of the sunset.<p>

"Keep it close, let it in. You'll grow strong and proud like the ancestors of old." His brown cheeks flush darker, and the pearl grows harder between his palms. He stays perched atop the balcony far after his grandmother departs, fingers clenched white around the cooling gem and eyes latched to the gaping maw of cold black water beneath him. He feels the darkness swirling up inside of him, and clutches the pearl tighter to his stomach. He sucks in a deep breath and shoves a little harder, feeling the ring of muscle beneath his ribs bending to accommodate the intrusion forcing its way against his diaphragm. When the pearl is as far into him as he can force, he feels the fear begin to subside, ebbing outward into the evening mist. The tang of salt-stenched wind slaps him hard, brings him to reality, as sand slips out to sea and Valoo brays long and low atop his mountain.

The boy is never seen without the pearl, and for the next two years, nothing falls apart.

* * *

><p>When he is fourteen Medli comes, and the darkness snarls and claws at the edges of his mind.<p>

Her face is a strange one, all queerly formed angles and diamond nares and huge eyes that reflect the majesty of the sky until all he sees is soft, vacuous blue. Her laugh brings with it sunlight and promises of summer. Her voice is gentle and kind, a smooth, honeyed tone that brings his eyelids downward and bids his heart beat faster.

His grandmother latches to her light like a lifeline. It hurts, the way he is expedited from his grandmother's affections. All she sees for weeks and weeks is Medli, Medli, Medli and the promise she holds.

His thoughts towards her are rude and violent, harsh like the summer sun, leaving invisible burns along her arms, the buds of her wings. Small, unfurling little worms that creep from between her shoulder blades. She is malformed, but at least she is formed. Komali's back is smooth like the parchment of his grammar books, untouched and unscarred. The skin of a royal. Not like Medli, with blisters and nicks across her fingers from tending to Valoo and climbing the crags of the cavern. Komali deigns never to visit that godforsaken tomb. It reeks of lava and blistering decay, an inferno filled with all manner of wriggling vermin.

It is only when he is sixteen and well of age to collect a scale of Valoo that he is sent off with smiles and a satchel with provisions, bread and fish and cheese and spring water. He creeps unnoticed through the cavern, ducking behind corners and cringing at the echoes from the movement of the magma.

He knows he shouldn't feel so displaced here. It is the home of his forefathers, the birthplace of Rito tradition. But somehow, as he burrows deeper and deeper into the cave, he feels as if he's paving his own road to purgatory. His grandmother's pearl is far, far away now, buried beneath his bedding and well-guarded lest anyone dare to attempt its capture. Here in this crypt, the darkness reaches for him from cracks in the walls, strokes long broken fingers across the chapped skin of his neck, his cheeks, traces lines into his bottom lip. He swallows hard and presses on, somehow making it from the darkness into the sun.

Never before has he felt such comfort in the sunlight. The ardor of white rays seeps through the pores of his skin, fills the crevices with light. He inhales the smell of the sea, so much purer than the essence of miasma prisoner in the depths of Dragon Roost.

Komali makes his way to the summit, confident, without the trepidation of the past few hours. It doesn't matter that he is alone in this, that his grandmother is dead or that Medli is safe and sound in the town below. The worst is over. Nothing else matters now.

* * *

><p>He fails.<p>

Valoo is hostile; bellicose.

Komali fails and he falls, falls through cloud and sky and sunlight into the algid embrace of the sea.

His body sinks into the muck of the ocean floor, all manner of crustacean pressing into the small of his back, seaweed glacial and sticky against his cheeks. He lays there until his lungs burn blistering and red like the heat of the sun and he smiles, smiles so wide and so large that it could have been a frown and oh, how his body aches beneath the crushing blackness of the smog around him.

It is a boy who saves him. A boy with hair like golden thread and a gaze of the brightest emeralds. He is small, much smaller than the adults he knows, but still taller than himself. Taller than Medli. In place of a beak there is a nose, straight and slight. In place of feathers and wings there is a glorious expanse of skin, soft and brown like summer barley. He is so very beautiful, and Komali wonders if he is from the Kingdom of the Sky.

But the angel does not speak, and Komali closes his eyes.

* * *

><p>The boy's name is Link, a hero of the South.<p>

He slays the beast, saves the town, and gets the girl.

Komali watches them as the bile pools in his stomach, the darkness clinging to his speech like daggers. Link doesn't dare to seek him out anymore. Komali has nothing kind to say to the beautiful boy. He will not. He cannot. Not even the pearl brings him comfort now.

So when the swordsman comes, he gives it freely. A gift from one lonely boy to another.

Only Link isn't so lonely with Medli in his arms, and Komali cries into his pillow sometimes, burying his face in the warmth to keep from being heard. It's the last thing he wants – to have his weakness exposed; to have his father think that he is jealous of them.

But he is.

He loathes the way he watches them, but he can't help it. He doesn't want Link's lips pressed against Medli's throat. He doesn't want Medli running her fingers up and over the line of Link's pulse, tiny little hands knotting in the folds of his fabric. He doesn't want them together. Instead...

Late at night, he dreams they lay beside him, one on each side. Medli curls against his back, small breasts trailing along his flesh, pressing butterfly kisses along the curvature of his spine, past the skin covering his scapula, smooth and virgin and empty, along his shoulder blades and down along his arms. Link wraps a hand around the back of his neck, leaning closer and closer until their lips mesh together, Link's tongue lapping gingerly at his own as strong hands slip lower and lower and lower and-

* * *

><p>He wakes up, years later, and Link is gone. Medli is far away, a prisoner in a temple of wind, a goddess of empty space. The blonde boy is never heard from again after the Great War. No one knows where he is. No one misses him. Not since he served his purpose.<p>

Komali stands out atop the great precipice, holding long dead flowers in his hands. The sea pounds like oil along the beach, velveteen and smooth as black silk. When the wind is just right, Komali lets the decaying blossoms sift through his long fingers. He drops them into the sea, wonders if Link will appear and save them like he saved himself, so very, very long ago.

The darkness builds and builds and builds deep within his body, and this time, there is to be no interference.

Komali closes his eyes, and takes the step forward into bottomless air, the gaping maw of the sea opening just enough to permit him welcome-

It closes with a snap, and all that remains is floating white flowers and long-dead echoes of heroes past.

Komali smiles.

He need only wait for the Hero of Time to pull him from this perdition.

**. . .**

_And if you gaze into the eyes of darkness, death  
>will swallow you whole.<em>


End file.
